Baptist Journal Releases Volume on Racism

The new issue of a prestigious Baptist theological journal focuses on the longstanding problem among Baptists – race – but with a different twist.
The fall 2011 volume of the Review & Expositor presents “examples of racial and cultural progress that could serve as models for individuals, congregations, partnerships, institutions, communities and even denominations,” wrote Emmanuel McCall, the issue’s editor.

One model presented is the merger of two congregations in Louisville, Ky., one predominantly African-American and the other predominantly Anglo-American.

Recalling his relationship over some three decades with Mark Payton, former pastor of Shively Heights Baptist Church, Lincoln Bingham, pastor of the newly merged church – St. Paul Baptist Church at Shively Heights – looked at the process the congregations under went to unite.

Bingham spelled out why the merger is working and offered advice to other pastors considering a merger.

Canadians Harry Gardner, president of Acadia Divinity College, and Lois Mitchell, director of public witness of the Convention of Atlantic Baptist Churches, looked at the history of racism among Baptists in Canada and what Canadian Baptists are doing to address racism.

They also examined the concept of “white privilege.”

“White privilege allows people of the dominant culture to live in a society that has institutionalized various racist attitudes and practices, and yet be oblivious to the ways these attitudes and practices affect those who are not ‘white’ or not of the dominant group,” they wrote.

Jamaican pastor Deonie Duncan centered her article on the ethics of tourism, noting that tourists often have a superior attitude toward the host culture and have a corrosive moral effect on the host country.

Contributing scholars include Bill Leonard, a Wake Forest University divinity school professor; Gerald Keown, a Gardner-Webb University divinity school professor; Bill Tillman, a Hardin-Simmons University theology school professor; and David Goatley, executive director of the Lott Carey Foreign Mission Convention.

Other contributors include Sara Powell, a member of the board of the Baptist Center for Ethics; Gerald Thomas, pastor of Shiloh Baptist Church in Plainfield, N.J.; Warren Stewart, pastor of First Institutional Baptist Church in Phoenix, Ariz.; and Matthew Carroll, seminarian at McAfee School of Theology.